UWL Hosts Space Conference

The 27th Annual Wisconsin Space Conference took place at UW-La Crosse. The event featured presentations of student research, workshops and guest speakers.

Keynote speaker Dr. Thomas Corbitt, a professor of physics from LSU, gave a presentation on gravitational waves and how they can be used to "see" what's out in space. One of the objects discussed, black holes. Gravitational waves help where giant telescopes may fall short.

"These are objects that are so massive, so dense, that even light cannot escape their surface. They don't have any light signature. We can't look at them with a telescope. So we have to look at other ways of looking at them. Gravitational waves represent the new way, the new window on the universe that we can use to look at these objects in a way we haven't been able to before," Corbitt said.